Hiroshi Ono

Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology
Ph.D. (Stanford)

York University
4700 Keele St
North York, Ont. M3J 1P3
Tele:416-736-2100 ext. 66264
Fax: 416-736-5814
hono@yorku.ca

The aim of my research is to further our understanding of how humans perceive the direction of visual stimuli with respect to themselves and to other visual stimuli. Although the history of studies in visual direction is a long one, the number of studies is small when compared with investigations into distance perception (seeing or judging the distance of an object from oneself) and depth perception (seeing or judging the distance between two objects). This work is important because before a comprehensive theory of space perception can be developed our understanding of visual direction must approach our level of understanding of distance perception.

To localize objects in 3-D space, one requires a reference point from which to determine the direction of the objects, both with respect to the self and with respect to other objects in the visual world. The necessity of such a point has been widely accepted in the visual direction literature for sometime, and the point is often called the cyclopean eye. The most prevalent conception of how observers make visual direction judgments is presented by Julesz. " This hypothetical eye incorporates the two real eyes into a single entity (with two overlapping retinae) and lies midway between the two real eyes. It is literally the center eye of the cyclops and the mythological allusion is very fitting since such an eye does not exist."

Many of my published works reinforce this conception on both a theoretical and an empirical level. However, there are at least two limitations. The first limitation is that the stimulus situations considered are incomplete(e.g., not considered is the situation in which Leonardo da Vinci realized that two views,one from each eye, cannot be represented "correctly" on a canvas).